Improvement in base-balls



U ITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

WILLIAM B. CARE, OF BROOKLYN, NEW YORK.

IMPROVEMENT IN BASE-BALLS.

Specification. forming part of Letters Patent No. 180,110, dated July25,1876; application filed J une 17-, 1876.

This invention has for its object to improve the filling, and also thecovering, of a baseball. As to the filling, it is necessary to renderthe ball as dead as possiblet. 6., de-

prive it of most of its resiliency, without altogether taking away itselasticity. To this end I construct the filling of alternate layers ofhard and soft wool, the yarn for the soft wool bein spun very loose, andmixed with a species of curly goats hair to .render it elastic. A ballthus made Will have the full measure of elasticity without possessingthe resiliency of baseballs containing rubber, and will, on theotherhand, be as dead, without being as inelastic, as balls that arefilled with but one kind of wool.

As to the covering, my invention consists in making it-of two pieces ofleather, each piece being made with projecting lapels that have'parallelsides, in contradistinction to the lapels made broader at their outerends, as

- heretofore.

In the drawing, the letter A represents the filling, and B the covering,of the ball.

The center of the filling is made of a small ball, a, of soft wool,around which a layer, b, of hard wool is laid. Around this is laidanother layer, 01, of soft wool, and so forth, the

layers of soft and hard wool alternating, as

indicated in Fig. 2, in which the lighter-shaded circles indicate thesoft wool. v

By the term hard wool I mean ordinary stocking-wool, now usuallyemployed in baseballs. By the term soft woolI mean a special preparationof my invention, consisting of very fine, loosely-spun wool, mixed withlong curly goats hair, and thereby made as elastic nearly asindia-rubber. This soft wool, when applied to the ball in manner shown,deprives it of its hardness, and'prevents it'from breaking or rapidlysoftening under the influence of the bat, and yet leaves it sufficientlydead for the purposes of the game of baseball.

The covering B is made of two pieces, 6 and f, of leather or equivalentmaterial, one piece being of the same shape and size as the other.

Fig. 3' shows the shape of one of the pieces.

It is made with four, more or less, projectinglapels, g g g g, as shown,each lapel being made with parallel sides and rounded ends, as shown.This form differs from that heretofore used, in having the parallelsides, where formerly they were made narrower, at their inner ends.

The advantage of the parallel sides is, first, that the material is cutto much better advantage, much less of it being wasted in cutting, asthe -lapel of one piece can be cut close to that ofanother piece;secondly, that a shorter seam around each lapel is required and,thirdly, that in stretching the leather on the ball, each part'of thelapel,being of equal width, is stretched to an even degree, which wasnot possible with lapels that differ in width at different parts oftheir length.

I claim as my invention- 1. The ball-filling composed of alternatelayers or thicknesses of hard and of soft wool, the layers of soft woolbeing rendered elastic by an admixture of hair, substantiallyasspecified.

2. The base-ball covering B, made with lapels g 9, that are of equalwidth throughout, substantially as herein shown and described.

w. B. oAnn.

Witnesses:

A. V. BRIESEN, ERNEST O. WEBB.

